Australia’s Matthew Goss was a mere three hundredths of a second off a gold medal at the 2011 UCI Road World Championships in Denmark today with Great Britain's Mark Cavendish (GBR) shading him on the line at the end of the 266km elite men's road race.

Germany's Andre Greipel, was third in a photo finish over Switzerland's Fabian Cancellara.

Today's result is the third straight year Australia has placed on the podium in the elite men's event with Cadel Evans winning in 2009 and Allan Davis coming third last year in Geelong. But the win by Cavendish meant Great Britain (2-gold, 2 silver and 2 bronze) pipped Australia (2-gold, 1 silver and 2 bronze) to top the medal table. France (2-gold and 1 silver) was ranked third and Germany fourth (2 gold and 3 bronze).

'I don't like being the bridesmaid! I would much rather be wearing that jersey there," said Goss pointing to the world champion's jersey worn by Cavendish, who is his team mate at HTC-Highroad. 'I am disappointed I am not wearing that jersey (but) I am happy I have finished the season well.

'I have another 10 or 12 world championships in me. This course suited me quite well but I can also get around a slightly harder course as well and sprint from a smaller group so I am going to have more chances.

Goss had a far from ideal preparation for the championships with illness forcing him to pull out of the recent Vuelta a Espana (Tour of Spain). To compensate he raced a couple of shorter races and put in a block of solid training. The revised plan did the job and with one hundred kilometres to go Goss told his team mates he was in form and they backed him for the finish.

'When he (Cavendish) went, I kind of jumped on the wheel. I knew it was still a long way to the finish line and I had in the back of my mind I could get back if everything went well, but in the the end I ran out of metres,' said the 24 year old who will ride with the new Australian GreenEDGE team from next year.

'He did a perfect sprint. He was just starting to slow and I was finishing a bit faster but there's not a medal for that,' said Goss. 'His team rode well and so did the Aussie guys, they rode like a seasoned professional team - it was incredible.

'The team did everything for me. Big hats off to those guys, I wasn't far away from finishing off the job.'

Australian Medal Table

Gold
• Jessica Allen - Junior women's time trial
• Luke Durbridge - U23 men's time trial

Silver
• Matthew Goss - Elite men's road race

Bronze
• Michael Hepburn - U23 time trial
• David Edwards - Junior men's road race